Thank you for your generous reply. Let me try and address your points, starting with one I agree with.

“Proof of absolute safety” is indeed impossible, as you suggest. So too, I believe, is proof of absolute harm. How often, growing up, did you hear about your neighbour’s uncle’s cousin who smoked 40 untipped Camels a day and lived to be 96? As a statistician, I’m sure you don’t mean “absolute,” so what do you mean? That’s where “reasonable doubt” comes in and where one’s starting point becomes important. If you start with a precautionary principle, I believe it is much easier to demonstrate reasonable certainty about safety than if you start with a presumption of safety, which is exactly what industry has used to great advantage.

Obviously I don’t think the episode was one-sided, at least not entirely so, though my bias probably does show through. On the other hand, contrary to your point, I did raise the point that “real food” proponents also play on a deficit and stoke fears.

“Natural” does not equal safe or healthy, I agree, and we could probably both cite natural ricin, or tetrodotoxin, or Clostridium. Why, then, were industrial food manufacturers so eager to use the word on packaging? To take advantage of a cognitive deficit, I expect. You (and I) may realise that natural does not mean safe or healthy, just as we know that water and starch are “chemicals” but I would suggest that we also both know that that is not how most people use or understand those words, just as an aubergine (or eggplant) is a vegetable not a fruit to anyone except a pedant (like me).

Regarding the unpronounceable questions. The informed question is not “what are they?”. It is “why are they there?” That is qhat Charlotte Biltekoff means when she says real food and real facts talk past one another. Industry wants us to understand that something is, for example, an emulsier, or a buffer, or whatever. Reasonable people want to know why the industrial version of a dish requires an emulsifier or a buffer or whatever.

When you say “The public doesn’t need to be educated with fact, but rather taught how to discern reliable information from misinformation” I can only stand back, applaud, and wonder how on Earth you do that, especially lately.

Thanks again for your comments.